Tulsi Gabbard announces the running of the White House; first Hindu to aspire to presidency

WASHINGTON: Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard pipped Senator Kamala
Harris in announcing she will run for the White House in 2020 in
what is expected to be an expansive Democratic field of up to a
dozen aspirants who will compete for the party nomination to take
on Republican incumbent Donald Trump.

“I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement
within the next week," Gabbard said in what appeared to be a
carefully choreographed interview on CNN’s Van Jones Show over the
weekend. She will be the first Hindu-American to run for the White
House, and should she win the party nomination and eventually
emerge victorious in the tortuous race to the White House – a long
shot by most accounts – she could become the first non-Christian,
and indeed first Hindu President of the United States.

Gabbard, 37, is the first significant candidate to plunge into a
field that has two other prominent women casing the ground.
California Senator Kamala Harris, who is of Indian-African-American
heritage, is weighing a run with a memoir and travels in primary
territory. Also in the hunt is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth
Warren, who has been scouting the ground in Iowa, which typically
is the first state to hold primaries.

At least one former Hillary Clinton aide has said she
may give it another shot in 2020 and some Bernie Sanders supporters
want him to also give it another try.

A fourth-term lawmaker from Hawaii, Gabbard, along with newer first-time
Representatives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex and Rashiada
Tlaib, is among the new set of Democrat insurgents who are
challenging the traditional power structure in the Party with their
radical leftist approach.

Gabbard, who served in the US military herself and is an Iraq War
veteran, stunned her party and the Washington establishment in 2017
when she made an independent trip to Syria and met the country’s
leader Bashar al-Assad, who the US regards as a sworn enemy.

"There are a lot of reasons for me to make this decision. There are
a lot of challenges that are facing the American people that I'm
concerned about and that I want to help solve," she said about her
White House bid. "There is one main issue that is central to the
rest, and that is the issue of war and peace.

Her views are already attracting an army of trolls on social media
who regard her as an outlier.

“Assad’s favorite Democrat is Running for President,” read a
headline in a far-right publication, while another critic
characterized her as a “next-level politician,” saying “Any amateur
can be a traditional US racist politician, but it takes skill to
succeed in America as a Hindu-nationalist racist/tankie Assad
apologist.”

Such attacks have never bothered the Hawaii Representative who
hasn’t been afraid to take on her own party establishment
–including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- and
its stranglehold on the nomination process.

Born in American Samoa in 1981 to Carol and Mike Gabbard, she is
the fourth of five children, all brought up in the Brahma Madhwa
Gaudiya Sampradaya that her mother embraced following her
introduction to the Krishna movement. She named her five children
Bhakti, Jai, Aryan, Tulsi, and Vrindavan.

After taking oath of office in 2013 on the Bhagavad Gita – a first
in the US Congress -- Gabbard said her practice of Hinduism awakens
the karma yogi in her, motivating her to serve others without
thinking about rewards.

''The Gita has been a tremendous source of inner peace and strength
for me through many tough challenges in life, including being in
the midst of death and turmoil while serving our country in the
Middle East,'' she explained. ''Its teachings have inspired me to
strive to be a servant-leader, dedicating my life in the service of
others and to my country.''

Guests at her Hindu wedding in 2015 included BJP general secretary
Ram Madhav, who flew in from India with a special message and gift
from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and India’s then acting
ambassador and charge d’affairs in Washington, Taranjit Sandhu.